A Cyclist's Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

People often ask questions like: «Who is your idol?». I don’t have any true idols, but yes I do find inspiration in some people. Sarah Ulmer is one such person. A New Zealand track cyclist legend, Sarah Ulmer broke the world record in the qualifying event for the women’s 3km pursuit time trial competition. She then came back to smash the world record during the race. Announcing her retirement from professional cycling in November 2007, Sarah Ulmer now focuses on her own online business, after launching sarahulmerbrand. This is a very comprehensive website with its own line of clothing plus lots of other quality content for cyclists.

Her achievements are many; here are a list of accomplishments (Source: famous New Zealanders): (más…)

Tags: Inspiration. // 3 Comments »

One of the major tasks here at www.Tenerife-Training.net is swapping pedals. There are more pedal systems out there than CO₂ molecules at the moment, and I know people are finding it all a bit too confusing. Judging by the perplexed customer responses as they inevitably bend down and spin another hitherto unknown pedal on its axis and say «they’re the wrong pedals!», by far the biggest misunderstanding lies with the Shimano Pedalling Dynamics (SPD) system. (más…)

Tags: Spoke Bed // Add Comment »

Tags: Inspiration. // Add Comment »

The aim of trials riding is to jump over obstacles (either natural or artificial) with only the bikes’ tyres touching the ground. Think of it like those dog trials you sometimes see on television, except with humans on bikes! Points are deducted if any part of your body or the bike touch the ground. Some competitions allow the underside of the bike and pedals to touch the ground. During observed trials, each rider attempts the set course with . The duration of each event is usually around 180 seconds; points are also deducted for going over that time limit. The winner is the rider who has the least number of accumulated points at the end of the competition.

Bicycle trials riding originated in Spain in the 1980s. The modified class of trials riding uses a special-purpose single-speed bicycle, built with small 20″ wheels and extremely low gearing, no saddle, no seatpost, and little else. The frame itself is built with a long wheelbase while the wheels utilise a high number of spokes and fat tyres. Trust me, these guys make it look easy – it takes HOURS of practise to reach this level of skill and ability:

(más…)

Tags: Inspiration. // Add Comment »

I’d really appreciate it if a few of you cyclists could take the time to fill in this brief one-page survey. It will only take 3-5 minutes of your time, and will help us improve our bicycle hire & tours service. We don’t ask for any personal information & your answers are kept strictly confidential.

The aim of the survey is to:

1. Receive feedback about future potential hire bikes + rental equipment and the level of quality that customers expect or desire.
2. Evaluate the website’s effectiveness in displaying information
3. Find ways to improve the website.
4. Devise ways to significantly increase our web traffic and hence our exposure by effective marketing.
5. To acertain your future level of interest with regards to cycling and training events in Tenerife.

Here’s your chance to have your say!  🙂
Thanks,
The management.

Tags: News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, That's Business // Add Comment »

Tags: Inspiration. // Add Comment »

Over the last few weeks I have been adding a few new features to the blog & I’ve also refined the style of theme I have been using. Here’s a list of what’s recently been added or changed:

• Google adwords have now been placed on this blog, to recoup some of the costs of running a high-profile website. When I started the blog, my plan was never to «sell-out». But these days, some people (cyclebetter.com) are using my RSS feed contributions on their site to generate revenue! Cheeky bastards! When I saw that, I suppose it was kind of the final straw. The remaining top-level www.Tenerife-Training.net domain pages will of course remain ad-free.
• You may have already noticed that a new feature called «snapshots»Â has also been added. These provide a quick preview of an externally-linked website. They also allow youtube text links to be played without leaving the page you’re currently viewing. If these bother you, they can be turned off or the preferences changed. Just adjust the settings in the top right corner of the snapshot preview window.
• Many new local cycling blogs & local cycling clubs in the Canary Islands have been added to the blog roll. I believe this is now the most comprehensive list cycling links in the Canary Islands.
• After some serious effort working on my current theme & the CSS styles it was using, the text now automatically wraps around the thumbnail images, leaving a nice margin around the picture. Previously when I tried to wrap text around a picture in the WYSIWYG editor, when the article was published online, the text jutted up against the picture leaving absolutely no space around it. That’s the reason I placed the thumbnails above and away from the paragraph text. However, it was one aspect that I never liked about the old design & knowing how to fix it has bugged me for some time. So I’m very pleased to announce that it’s now finally fixed!
• Borders around linked pictures are no longer blue, they’re gold-yellow.
• The borders around linked images now change to the colour red when you hover the mouse over them.
• The search box has been placed at the top of the sidebar. Unlike before where it was restricted to searching the blog, it now searches the entire www.Tenerife-Training.net internet database including the forum. It actually works quite well, so please feel free to use it!
• The RSS feed subscription icon has now been delegated to the bottom of the sidebar. Who uses RSS feeds anyway? Not me.
• The calender has also been shoved down the sidebar quite a bit. Of course the idea behind all this was to improve the exposure to the ads, because they’re no use to anyone at the very bottom of the page.
• Categories have been renamed thusly:
  • Inspiration.
  • Island Life
  • Lucky Dip
  • Mental Anguish 
  • News Reel
  • Ride the Volcano!
  • Sales Pitch
  • Science Simplified
  • Spoke Bed
  • That’s Business
  • Vida Enigmática

Tags: News Reel // Add Comment »

You hear so many people talking about how business owners should treat their customers, that «the customer is always right». We’ll I’ve had one or two irritable customers so I’ve written this article with something different in mind: Tips on how to be a polite customer! 😛

(más…)

Tags: That's Business // Add Comment »

As far as most people are concerned, all foreign speech sounds more or less the same. When you are first learning another language, you can soon expect to identify people only by hearing their voice. In my experience, this important listening skill takes place within a matter of weeks or months, depending on the amount of exposure you’ve received.

This is because everyone has a unique voice, just like their fingerprints, retina/iris; all three can be used for biometric recognition scans:

I was exceptionally good at identifying actors in different roles by their voice patterns, especially when wearing some sort of disguise. Just recently, I identified (más…)

Tags: Island Life // Add Comment »

Tags: Inspiration. // Add Comment »

It appears that Tenerife North airport (TFN) will get a new control tower, more than 30 years after the world’s biggest air disaster took place there. While the existing control tower is only one of three to be fitted with sophisiticated surface or ground radar equipment in Spain, it’s the second oldest air traffic control tower in the country, apparantly dating back to 1965.

With an height of 41.3 metres the new tower will stand almost double the height of the current tower at TFN airport. Costing an estimated 7.3 million euros, construction is already underway. This is part of a 77 million euro plan to upgrade TFN airport before 2010. The planned completion date of the new control tower in Tenerife is at the end of 2008. The building proposal shown above is part of a project to upgrade the air traffic control tower, dating back to 2002. It certainly looks to be taking the same shape.

Tenerife aiport (TFN) is well known among aircraft enthusiasts as the site for the world’s biggest air disaster. This occurred on March 27, 1977. A total of 583 passengers & crew were killed; only 56 people aboard the Pan Am jet survived the tradgedy. (más…)

Tags: Island Life // 1 Comment »

If you have a bicycle with disc brakes, you’ll soon find there are many possible choices for the rotor sizes. From a tiny 5″ all the way to a whopping 9″! The next time you need to replace a rotor, consider the following points.

Advantages of bigger disc rotors:

• Larger disc rotors obviously give much more power than smaller rotors.
• For the same braking effort, larger rotors will run cooler than smaller rotors, reducing the phenomenon known as brake fade.
• Larger rotors will last longer than smaller rotors, as there is more metal present in the brake track circumference.
• In my experience with steep descents here in Tenerife, where brake overheating is a real problem, larger rotors will also improve the wear life of the pads themselves (especially organic pads), as they don’t tend to overheat as much.

Disadvantages of bigger disc rotors:

• Each time you step up the size of the rotor, you add a considerable amount of rotational weight to your bike.
• Another down side of big rotors is that they tend to be a bit ‘grabby’ (meaning on-off-on-off braking performance)
• Contrary to what you might think, large disc brake rotors are more prone to warping than small rotors.
• The bigger disc rotors are therefore harder to keep centred & hence can become quite noisy even when pedaling along without applying the brakes. (más…)

Tags: Learning Curve // Add Comment »

Here in the north of Tenerife, we have about 15 free Spanish TV channels and zero english ones. Spanish television can be an enjoyable experience. First I reccommend reading this article about spanish television customs in preparation, and only watch the suggested TV shows described briefly below.

Spanish Comedies- If you have an advanced understanding of Spanish, the sitcom Aida is very funny. The characters are all very unique and the acting is excellent. My favourite character is Chema. currently it is aired on Sundays on channel tele5. Aqui no hay quien viva is also a very famous Spanish sitcom.

(más…)

Tags: Island Life // Add Comment »

It’s a new 100% electric car which is very inspiring indeed! I think this is the way of the future. The aptera type 1 100% electric vehicle will hit the market in 2009, at an expected market price of only US$30,000. I would however like to see Aptera annouce a solar-powered recharging module that could be installed on the roof of your home.

Of course some will say that we’re moving the pollution from the car to the source of the electricity (power stations). But in the future, we can always choose where our electric energy comes from. If we can reduce the number of vehicles which rely on fossil fuels, it will also substantially cut down on the cost of transportation of petroleum associated with their use. I imagine that there are much fewer losses in transferring electricity throughout national electricity grids than the energy required to transport petrol for cars. While we stick with vehicles that use fossil fuels, we’re never going to make any real progress.

Some poeple have already commented that it looks like something straight out of the Jetsons. But if you’re a fan of Space Quest, you’ll aready know that the Aptera TYP-1 electric vehicle introduced in late 2007 shows an uncanny resemblance to the Timebuster 2000 SUX time machine as reviewed in Space Piston Magazine (pictured below).

(más…)

Tags: Inspiration. // Add Comment »

This is a dual-part article on the how and why of travelling light. This part inlcudes some pertinent facts about travelling light which you might not have thought of. Part 1 offers some very sage advice. (más…)

Tags: Inspiration. // 1 Comment »

Between 1999 and 2005, I was fortunate enough to travel to many foreign countries. In the year 2000 I bought a round the world ticket offered by Oneworld visiting more than 10 countries throughout my journey. In 2005, I went and did it again. This time there were 21 different countries on my itinery and I visited continents in both Winter and Summer.

Yet each time, I was able to travel with only a 23L backpack! I chose to use the Berghaus Freeflow 23L model. This weighed between 5-7kg, so I never checked in any luggage either. Many people I met were amazed at how I was able to manage this feat. Check-in staff were especially in awe when they inevitably saw all the places I was going. Some others thought I was just plain crazy. How is it possible? Well it’s suprisingly easy, if you know how and are prepared to make a few sacrifices… (más…)

Tags: Inspiration. // 2 Comments »

Meridian Zero is a local ‘homegrown’ metal rock band based in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. They do give me a lot of inspiration, especially when I see the individual band members playing separately in the videos below. How they manage to create new music by melding all the sound contributions together never ceases to amaze me. Meridian Zero is fast gaining popularity which is also good to see.

After releasing their debut album «Doors of Creation» in late 2007, Meridian Zero is holding several concerts in the Canary Islands later this month to promote sales of their compact disc. One concert will be held in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria on the 15th of March, 2008; two concerts will also be held in Tenerife – one on the 29th of March in Los Realejos and the other on the 25th of April right here in La Orotava! Check www.Meridian-Zero.com for more information.

Here’s their video «Fighting to Arrive»:

Here’s the lead guitarrist and good friend Ivan «Scalpel» Ruiz playing the solo from «Fighting to arrive»:

(más…)

Tags: Inspiration., Island Life // 1 Comment »

 

It’s been two weeks since I last wrote an article for «That’s business», so I thought it was time to reflect upon this topic.

In mid 2007, I set myself the following simple goal: to quadruple the number of web visitors by the end of the year. The target was 200 daily web visits, which at the time seemed like an immense number. I’m pleased to report that visitor numbers are up again substantially in the last 2 months; there were 9271 visits in January 2008, and 10,550 visits in February! This result is actually almost double my anticipated aim, so I couldn’t be happier! There’s no secret or hard and fast rules to increasing web traffic, but it does require a serious, continuing effort to achieve these visitor numbers.

First and foremost, visitors don’t come from nowhere. They have to be attracted to something. Although I am not formally educated in this subject, I do have a few personal theories about how to improve exposure to my internet business. For one thing, social networking theory has helped me to understand complex interactions (más…)

Tags: That's Business // 1 Comment »

You may not be able to think of anything more chaotic than a crazy spanish freeway, and in many cases you’d be absolutely darn right. But there is an underlying order in chaos, and this is what I’ll attempt to extract and share with you here. As many regular readers know, after many delays, I recently obtained my Spanish driving license, so I’m in a unique position to make sense of it all now. Far from being totally random, vehicle movements on Spanish roads are actually quite predictable when you can recognise the patterns:

• At high speeds, spanish drivers prefer to swerve rather than initiate abrupt braking manouvres. This avoids the chances of a pile up caused by multiple rear-end collisions. It increases the risk of crashing into everything else, but never mind that.
• To aid the fluidity of dense, high-speed traffic, giving way to merging traffic is not advised. Instead, spanish drivers help them to incorporate onto the freeway by changing lanes, but only if there is an opportunity. Otherwise they’ll shoot straight through without slowing. The rationale: why molest all of the cars behind you for the sake of a few in an entrance lane?
• To further aid the fluidity of dense traffic, drivers are taught from the very beginning to use the right lane unless overtaking. Except that this rule is not merely reccommended, it’s truly extolled here in Spain, being drummed into all driving students by all driving instructors for hours on end.
• Unfortunately, Spanish highways have become so clogged, that travelling in the right lane inevitably means encountering slower moving vehicles within less than 20 seconds’ time. And because the Spanish are usually running late for their appointments, there is also an overwhelming presence of Spanish drivers in a hurry to get somewhere. Hence, you’ll encounter a wide spread of driving velocities, from the achingly slow to the dangerously fast. Simple explanation? In Spain, there is always some schmuck in more hurry than yourself, so you can’t stay in the left lane very long either…
• What all this means in real terms is that Spanish drivers change lanes more times in one hour than they change their underpants in a whole year. (más…)

Tags: Island Life // Add Comment »

 

Learning Spanish:

A very good program to watch when you are learning Spanish is «Karlos Arguiñano en tu cocina» (Karlos Arguiñano in your kitchen) currently aired on channel 5 (telecinco) at 1:00 – 2:30pm weekdays. He well-renowned Spanish chef, known for three things: his ability to cook an extremely wide range of authentic Spanish dishes, his cleanliness around the kitchen studio is second-to-none and his reputation for telling bad spanish jokes.

(más…)

Tags: Island Life // Add Comment »